William Lafferty Memorial

The William Lafferty Memorial Funeral and Carriage Collection is a museum focused on the funeral profession. Established in 1994, the museum is located in West Union, Ohio.The museum is named for James William Lafferty, a funeral director in West Union, who died in 1987. Lafferty was the fourth generation of his family to be involved with the Lafferty Funeral Home in West Union. He hoped to preserve artifacts that his ancestors had used in the funeral profession. He also actively purchased other objects and created a sizable collection of mortuary items from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The William Lafferty Memorial Funeral and Carriage Collection contains horse-drawn and motorized hearses, caskets, mortuary clothing, and a variety of other items.